Urban Issues

Over five millennia, urban centers have been drivers of civilization and progress, and have adapted in ways that have changed their form and function but assured their survival. Today, they are about to undergo another critical transition that will determine their relative position in the decades ahead.  read more »

As Japan fell into population decline early in the last decade, the Tokyo area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures), in something of a paradox, experienced population increases.  read more »

Central Avenue, the historic heart of South Los Angeles, has seen better days. Once the home to leading black institutions, like the famous Dunbar Hotel, where jazz and other musical greats stayed, it was also an industrial powerhouse that promised decent work for those fleeing the Jim Crow South.  read more »

For the past decade, America’s urban centres have been increasingly run by ‘progressive’ activists. Yet today, as US cities reel from collapsed economies, rising crime and pervasive corruption, there’s something of a revolt brewing, the success of which may well determine the role and trajectory of our great urban centres.  read more »

Perhaps because I’m from the Midwest, I’m always fascinated by the factors that drive economic growth and decline, particularly at the metro level. I often hear that when a metro area is experiencing a boom, pundits say that declining metros ought to replicate the actions and policies of a booming one.  read more »

The most credible estimates say that at least 20 percent of workers will continue to work at home on any given day after the pandemic, up from less than 6 percent before the pandemic. The share of remote workers is likely to be much higher in Silicon Valley, where a lot of workers do jobs that don’t require daily office visits  read more »

We are living amidst a sea change in demographic trends. According to the Census Bureau, the United States last year experienced its lowest population growth “since the founding of the nation” more than 230 years ago.  read more »

Glenn Ellmers’s analysis of COVID and Trump represents a classic, and effective, account of the situation from the perspective of declining liberty and adherence to traditional values.  read more »

It's been a week since a mentally ill racist murdered 10 people, most of them Black Americans, in a Buffalo supermarket. In the intervening days since this horrific tragedy  read more »

As COVID-19 restrictions lift and cities attempt to stem the population and commercial losses they have sustained over the past two years, many urbanists are still banking that the historic, well-documented trend of young adults flocking to big cities  read more »